I’m here today to talk about everyone’s favorite thing: money. Or, more specifically: budgets. Okay, so maybe neither of these things are really anyone’s favorite thing. But sometimes they’re both kind of an important thing…or so I’m learning.

I’ll admit, I have never lived on a budget before. I mean, I kept track of my money, had a general idea of where it was going and when it was going there, but I never really watched it – or held myself particularly accountable for it.

That, of course, changed with the wedding. We knew that the wedding would be expensive, no matter who was paying for it, and we wanted to make sure that we managed our money as responsibly as possible. And with a project as large as a wedding (in any capacity), that meant a budget.

Which, in turn, meant that Microsoft Excel and I got to be best friends for about five months. My math-minded husband thought that this was great. I, on the other hand, was not a huge fan. I tend to be more of a feeler. Like when I walk into Target and just feel like that sweater needs to come home with me. And then when I feel so warm and fuzzy inside when it does.

Needless to say, the budget did not go away when the wedding was over. No, it made its reappearance just the other day when Shayne and I decided that we should make a budget part of our daily lives. And, strangely enough, I’m excited about it! Not because it means that I will be thinking twice about feeling any purchases from Target into our closet, but because it means that we’re going to be managing our own money more carefully – or at least with more awareness.

Which also means that we’ll be spending our money today with an eye on the future – a future that may very well (a long time away) include diapers and house payments. And as scary as those adventures sound sometimes to my still-independence-loving brain, they’re something that we want to make sure we plan for.

Well, friends, I think that the moral of the story is that Excel and I are going to have to get re-acquainted. That’s not the worst thing in the world, right?